Nenfari: an Assassin's Flower novella

  Chapter Four

  Mom was on the phone in the kitchen when we got home. She only commutes to the city twice a week. Thank the gods for computers and intelligent bosses. Leaning against the counter she rolled her eyes and grinned at me as I herded the kids in through the screen door. "No, Joth, tonight's not good...."

  I dumped my book bag on a kitchen chair and opened the fridge, fishing through the Tupperwares to find a tray of pre-cut carrots. I opened that, put it on the table and snagging a jar of Mountain Berry All Natural juice, began pouring cups for Arrie and Carley.

  "Yes, I'll read it as soon as I can--I've got a deadline on the manuscript I'm proofing." Phone balanced on her shoulder, Mom pulled a bulk sized jar out of the cabinet and twisted the lid open.

  "Can I go play with Sammy?" Arrie asked, his chubby hands wrapped around his juice cup.

  "After your snack." Mom poured trail mix from the jar and set it in front of the kids, who dug in greedily. And then, "I don't believe--! Joth, I really don't think my kids are any of your business." Her face was incredulous. With the hand that wasn't holding the phone she made a "crazy" gesture. "What kind of danger? Look if you can't..." She heaved a sigh. "Joth, if you want me to take you seriously you've got to come up with something better than that. No...no. I've got to go now." She clicked off the phone. "What a fruitcake," she said setting it down.

  "What was that about?" I asked.

  "The man is disturbed. I meant what I said about avoiding him if he comes around again. First it was his story, and just now he heard Arrie asking to go next door and--I'll tell you later." She glanced significantly at the kids.

  I nodded my understanding.

  "I realize that as someone who talks to trees, I may not have the right to put him down for visions and that sort of thing, but...." Laughing, she made a waving-away gesture with her hand, "So tell me about school."

  "Mom, can I go play with Sammy now?"

  "Sure honey. Just--how about bringing Sammy over here? You can play on the tire swing."

  "But Sammy has Transformers!"

  "He can bring them over here." I dialed Sammy's mom and arranged it, and Arrie trooped outside to meet Sammy at the gate that joined our yards.

  "I have to do Show-and-Tell tomorrow," Carley announced. "Can I bring my Tarot cards?"

  Mom promptly nixed that idea. No doubt she'd get flack from the fundies at school. After a bit of negotiation, she talked Carley into taking a collection of road-kill bird wings. Carley loved birds, so it was a good compromise. I nuked the leftover lamb from last night, and threw together a quick dinner while Mom got a sheet of foam board.

  "Allen and James should be over soon," Mom said, dusting the preserving compound out of a pair of mourning dove wings. We use a mix of borax and salt, with some spices thrown in to make them smell better. "We have enough for them too?"

  "Yeah, sure." I threw on a pot of rice, grabbed some extra veggies and cheese out of the fridge and started chopping.

  Mom handed the wings to Carley who pinned them onto the foam board.

  "We're almost out of pitas though."

  "Sec, I'll get them to pick some up." She pulled the next set of wings out of the compound, handed them to Carley and picked up the phone again. "No problem," she said, after she hung up.

  By the time Mom and Carley had gotten three more sets of wings on the board, Allen and James were at the door.

  "I come bearing pitas," Allen said, giving Mom a courtly bow and presenting the bag with a flourish. He was slight and wore glasses and a carefully trimmed brown beard that made him look like a scholarly satyr. All he needed was the horns.

  "And hummus," said James. "Allen's special recipe." James was a burly biker type with a shaved head and a tattoo of an acorn wreath right in the middle of his bald pate. James was the oldest son of Mara, their coven's Crone.

  Back in the City, Allen had been the executive chef at one of the big restaurants, and when he and James moved up here they'd opened a bakery.

  "Sorry we're late," Allen said. "I know you wanted to go over that--," he glanced at me and Carley. "Anyway, we were over at the Gardens for Nutrition finalizing our plots for this year."

  "No problem." Mom gathered up the wing project and hauled it out to the side porch. "Maybe you could help Carley finish it after dinner?" she said to me over her shoulder.

  I took a damp cloth and wiped away some of the spilled preserving compound. "So what's with the Gardens? I thought you guys had a garden at your house?"

  "We do, and you should see my new pitcher plant," James said with a smile that lit his craggy face. "But it's not big enough to grow veggies in. Not enough veggies to preserve for winter, anyway."

  "Plus we got two extra plots, and we're going to grow vegetables for the Food Not Bombs project." Allen opened our silverware drawer and started setting out places.

  "You have time for that?" Mom said, returning from the porch. She got out some plates and handed them to Allen.

  He laughed. "Not really, but we're having some of our employees work it with us, for full pay. It'll be good press for the bakery. But wow, you should see the place! This one garden has an Egyptian-style temple built on the plot."

  "And about every other garden has a Green-Man face carved somewhere," James added.

  "Yeah," I said, "we had a plot there a few years back."

  After dinner, Mom cleared the table and gave me a significant look. "We have some coven business to deal with. I'll do the dishes, if you could watch Arrie and Carley?"

  I sighed. I was curious what the meeting was about, but there was no way they'd tell me. We moved the kids to the glassed in side porch. As Mom closed the French doors between the living room and the porch, I heard the word, "Beltaine" and a great deal of laughing.

  They were probably plotting something for the upcoming Sabbat. I'd already suspected they were cooking up some prank they were going to pull at the big local gathering. Of course Beltaine is centered around the earth's fertility, and is considered an "adult" Sabbat by some, so not much chance they were going to share the joke with me. I was just a kid as far as they were concerned. Not to mention good baby-sitting material.

  "I'm switching out to my glasses," I told Carley. "Sorry Mom, I won't listen," I said as I dashed up the stairs. I went to the bathroom and took off my contact lenses. They get uncomfortable if I don't give them a break every few days. My glasses are huge clunky things with lenses almost as thick as the bullet-proof glass you see at the bank. Much as I hated wearing glasses in "public," James and Allen were family, so they didn't count.

  "Lets get this done with," Back on the porch I put the posterboard on a fold-out table and pulled the lid back off the plastic container of compound and wings. "You know, I have homework too."

  Carley didn't even bother to look grateful.

  Every time I switch to my glasses, there's a period of disorientation because my prescriptions don't exactly match. Distances get distorted and it feels like I'm standing on a high platform, with the ground uneven around me. The edges are so thick that the blasted things catch the light like a prism. When I first got this pair I thought I was seeing colored auras. But nope, it was just the refraction from the glasses.

  I'm not entirely blind. I can make out the lines on my hand clearly from about four inches from the tip of my nose, and read a book from about the same distance. I can identify faces from a few feet, but they're usually blurry, and depending on the light I can't always read someone's expression. All in all, wearing glasses is a pain, but not nearly as bad as being nearsighted.

  Still dizzy with the transition, I set Arrie up with a coloring book and got out a marker, some index cards and a scissors. "I'll make labels, you clean off the rest of the wings and pin them on."

  "Okay. What's this one, Willa?" She held up a pair of wings that were black with white stripes. A tuft of reddish-orange feathers clung to them just where the wings met the breast."

  Picking it up, I gazed at a wing, flipped it o
ver and looked again. I pulled off my glasses and checked them out close up. "I think that's the towhee Odin caught last fall."

  It didn't take me long to go through the pile, see what we had and make labels for them. "Okay, you do the rest. I'll put the labels on the right wings. Don't mix them up." Grabbing my backpack, I hauled out my notebook and started working on my homework. Once again, there wasn't a lot of it. Having substitute teachers was great.

  I was meditating on the essay I had to write when I noticed a shadow moving on the floor. At first it looked like a gray blur. As I focused on it, it took form. It looked like the body of a snail with a dragon's head and front paws. It was almost cartoonish. Shaking my head, I blinked, but the vision didn't go away. It inched across the carpet toward me, almost reaching the tip of my foot. Then it faded and was gone.

  What the--? I had to be imagining it. Maybe it was my glasses.

  Then I glanced over at Arrie. He was still coloring in his book, but instead of joining the dots, he'd drawn a picture of the snail-dragon.

  Carley was staring at the spot near my foot where the thing had faded. "What was that?" she whispered.

  "You saw it too?"

  "Yeah."

  "I think it was..." I was whispering too, as if I was scared I'd frighten it away, which was pretty silly since it was already gone. "I think it was a faery."